A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, May 9, 2010
John 5:1-9
I don’t know if it’s a good sign, but I frequently read advice columnist Carolyn Hax in the Portland Press Herald. I find her direct, no-nonsense approach is refreshing and wise. A while back I came across the following, where a reader said:
CAROLYN: I’m a part of your typical yuppie-ville couple. Live outside a big metro¬politan area. Work in corporate America. Have a puppy. Will have babies. Upgraded to SUV. Problem? I’m bored. A little freaked out that “this is it.” Have bouts where I dream of moving away to an island and becoming a bartender. Is this a normal emotion? Or should I be taking different actions to make my life more meaningful? – Snoozeville, USA
Carolyn responded):
PLEASE PLEASE talk openly of this with your mate. It is normal… common? … epi¬demic? … but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to dismiss. Even now, when hunting and gathering mean parking and shopping, we spend a good amount of our daily lives on the trudge of survival. Earning, eat¬ing, cleaning. And, dying a little.
Somewhere in there, we have to inject a sense of purpose, a reason for earning/eating/etc., to make the dying OK. Unless you found your way to yuppie-ville through spiritual means, it probably just looked like the thing to do. As purposes go, that’s garbage.
That doesn’t mean your life is. It could be extraordinary, with the right purpose. Purposes don’t need to be crusades; your spouse/dog/kids can inspire you, your quiet faith, your hobby or cause you couldn’t sustain in any other context but this stable, mainstream life.
So what about your life? Do you live with a sense of purpose and direction and joy? Is there anything that stirs your passion, your energy; or do you feel life is “on hold?” Are you heading somewhere, toward some destination, fulfilling a dream? Or are you sitting in the parking lot wonderful is this is all there is?
It’s pretty common to design your life in your imagination, creating a mental picture of how everything should be, thinking that then you can measure the progress, step-by-step, until you can drive a stake in the ground like a Spanish Conquistador claiming Florida. Then you can say “I’ve fulfilled the dream!”
But then life gets in the way. Something goes wrong and the plan disintegrates. And then you have two choices – push on through the tough times… or put life on hold. We each react in our own way but lots of people get stuck.
Just remember, if you stop, or retreat, you risk missing out on the great joy that’s possible. Today’s Gospel reading tells us about someone who was really stuck. It took place at the Pool of Bethesda. I’ve stood there three different times – once with several of you there. The pool is just inside the Sheep’s Gate near the center of the Old City of Jerusalem just a short walk from the Temple Mount where Jesus frequently went to preach and teach.
Archaeologists have excavated down thirty feet or so because over the centuries the streets of Jerusalem were built up layer over layer. To reach the excavated site of the old pool you now walk down modern stairs, surrounded by stone work likely laid during the reign of Herod the Great.
The Pool, often called Bethesda or Beth-saida, measures about the size of a football field. There’s a partition across the center, dividing it in half. And there are ruins of covered walkways down the four sides and across the center, hence the name “the five arches” or porticoes. There are also porches on all sides with steps down to the spring-fed pools.
Long before Jesus’ day the devout believed the spirit of God would come unannounced and stir up the water from time and time. The first person to get into the pool would be healed of his or her affliction. But only the first person… everyone else was out of luck. So, it was a long shot. There wasn’t a triage nurse who’d decide on the urgency of one patient’s needs over another, like a modern emergency room. The sick and infirm came and waited and waited; for days, months, or years.
Scripture doesn’t say how many might have gathered there but there appeared to be room for hundreds. John tells us Jesus went out on the Sabbath and visited there, surrounded by people who were blind, lame, paralyzed. He stepped close to one – a man who’d been ill for 38 years, and presumably had been coming to that same spot for all that time. His life was on hold.
Jesus’ first words sound almost harsh: “do you want to be made well?”
Well, yeah – why do you think he’s there? But maybe not so fast. I’m no psychologist but I’ve gained a pretty good understanding of human nature… especially other people’s human nature! I know I can look at someone’s life from my perspective and see pretty quickly what the hang-ups are. And I know I’ve asked many people the question: “So do you want it to be different?” assuming they’d answer “Yes, absolutely, I’d do anything, give anything to get out of this rut.” But that’s not always the answer, is it.
So Jesus’ said to the man by the pool: “You’ve been coming here 38 years, apparently to get healed, but you’ve never gotten into the pool in time? What else is going on? Do you really want to be cured? Maybe life hasn’t been comfortable for you, but it’s sure secure and predictable. Getting healed means huge changes. Are you ready?”
So the man explained: whenever the pool was stirred, someone else reached it first, because he had no one there to help him. So in all of 38 years he’d never made it to the pool first. Now there was someone to help him. “Pick up your mat and walk!” commanded Jesus. And the man did. He was free.
No one says it’s easy. No one is promising miracles. There are lots of physical afflictions that are never healed. But we also know in our heart of hearts that attitude is everything. You may be feeling like your life is on hold, while the person next to you is thinking “boy, has she ever got it all together. If I had her good luck…”
The blunt truth is that we’re only as stuck as we decide to be.
I’ve shared a little of the process of our selling our home on Ocean Street where we’ve lived 20 years, and preparing to move to a new place. In the course of this all Andrea and I have heard from friends “gee, I should have done that years ago, but I couldn’t get started;” or “I’d love to downsize but I just don’t know were to begin, so I don’t!” Or, “with all we’ve got in the attic and basement it’s just not possible; I just hope I’ll die before I have to deal with it and my kids can do the work!”
As far as we know, each of us receives only one lifetime. Things happen that are far beyond our control and those things shape us. At times it seems those things take over our lives, imprison us. And so it will be unless and until we decide we want it to be different.
You may be feeling it’s all you can do to get up in the morning, stumble along, and collapse at the end of the day… no dreams, no visions, no joys, no sustaining relationships… just an endurance contest. Don’t settle for that. It’s the waste of a precious gift.
We can do better than that if we decide to… especially those of us who choose to belong to the Christian community. At its simplest this a place where we collectively and mutually agree that we want our lives to dive below the surface, to have a deeper meaning, a foundation that is solid in every season. This is the place where we can belong and we can give and receive encouragement.
For me, discipleship is the recognition that Jesus has something powerful and life-changing to teach me. The more I read and meditate about his life, the more I pray for openness and trust, the more sure I am of that Truth.
The Jesus I encounter in scripture is a master of “tough love.” His impatience is clear when he meets someone who’s stuck. He’s all about life, abundant life. He’s rarely as patient as we make him out to be.
We can find a hundred excuses to stay where we are – maybe because it’s safe and good; but maybe, too, not because it’s safe and good but more because it’s static and familiar.
And staying stuck means we may well look back and regret deeply how carefully we played the cards we were dealt.
In her poem, The Summer Day, Mary Oliver writes in part:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
{from New and Selected Poems, 1992 – Beacon Press, Boston, MA}
What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Don’t tell God you’re too old, or too stuck, or that it’s impossible to live differently.
• The only thing holding us back is the fear we might not succeed in living the dream.
• And the greatest hope pushing us forward is the chance that we might.